Patten Academy
Maine
This monument and bell honor Patten Academy, the school that anchored this small northern Maine town for more than a century. The academy was incorporated in the eighteen forties and opened its doors to sixty-one students drawn from Patten and the surrounding logging country.
For generations it educated the children of a community built on timber, deep in the shadow of Mount Katahdin. Its proudest moment is said to have come in nineteen forty-seven, when the Patten Academy basketball team stunned the state by beating powerhouse Boston Latin to claim a New England championship. Crowds turned out to welcome the champions home, and that team was later honored.
The academy eventually closed. Today its old lot is the Patten Academy Alumni Park, and this bell still marks the spot where so many local lives began.
